Augmented Reality Ex Nihilo

[David] sent in a nice project to demonstrate augmented reality with ARtoolkit and discuss the deep philosophical underpinnings of the meaning of nothingness. The good news is he was able to create a volume control button on a sheet of paper with a marker. The bad news is the philosophical treatment is a bit weak; [David] built something cool, so we’re able to let that slide for now.

This build was inspired by the Impromptu Sound Board made using a Kinect and a piece of paper. The idea behind the sound board is simple – draw some buttons on the paper, and use them to play short sound clips. [David] took this idea to make a small tutorial on augmented reality for Occam’s Razor.

The hardware is very simple – just a webcam, a piece of paper, and a marker. After [David] draws a large square on the paper, the code recognizes it as a volume control. Rotating the paper counterclockwise increases the volume, and clockwise turns the volume down. It’s a neat build to get into the foundations of augmented reality.

Check out the video demo of [David]’s build after the break.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?&v=CX5H2rRdWuI&w=470]

13 thoughts on “Augmented Reality Ex Nihilo

      1. No its not AR, the triangle is just to visualize what the software registers, its not necessary for the operation of the volume control, it doesnt add functionality or useful information for the user.

      2. You are correct Mercure. Jack must be new at life or something. Even just looking at the word “augment” without having any tech know-how you can inference that this is indeed augmenting aka modifying reality. Kids these days.

      3. Jack this is augmented reality – whether it adds functionality or useful information to the user is irrelevant. A car is still a car even if it can’t start.

        Augmented Reality is the art of overlaying virtual data on top of real data. The toolkit he uses, ARToolkit (Augmented Reality Toolkit) allows for this.

    1. There is an AR element to this example, but the image recognition and response is what it should be focusing on.

      The overlayed graphics aren’t really necessary for the control to serve its purpose, but I suppose they do aid in positioning the marker.

      I don’t think it should really count as AR unless it adds something meaningful to reality. And no, I don’t count gimmicky 3D models as meaningful. :p

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